What strikes me as interesting is that how come when a man wants to self identify as a woman, she doesn’t start doing the dishes, cleaning the toilets, changing the diapers, volunteering for hours of unpaid labor in the community? How about, “I self identify as a woman so I’ve decided to invest all my time and energy into putting the needs of others before my own? And since I self identify as a woman, I’m going to insist you don’t pay me a dime for my work. ”

That is femaleness! Actually I don’t really know what “femaleness” is. It’s some innate quality that men are entitled to. And apparently performing femininity impedes progress if you’re a born woman, but it’s something that should be supported in transwomen. Ai yi yi, I have a headache.

What the fuck is going on in that post? Twisty has gone off the deep end.

I don’t get this identifying as female bullshit. Female and male are scientific descriptions based on reproduction. They’re not even claiming it’s about gender anymore but are claiming it’s about sex now? That should be the nail in he coffin for anyone thinking this trans stuff makes sense.

yttik, that’s brilliant. I’d been using stuff along the lines of “I declare myself a man. Where’s my pay raise?” but your version is a zillion times better.

The whole gender thing feels like a Trojan horse to me. I noticed it when I took a Sociology of Gender course. We talked, at the beginning of the course, about how one’s sex and gender don’t always “match.” But later in the semester when it came time to talk trans, I was told that what makes me female are two X chromosomes, what makes a trans woman female is his say-so, and these two ways of being female are the same. The same! The careful gender distinction made earlier in the course was deliberately erased just when it was about to have a meaning. Funny that.

Laurel: The careful gender distinction made earlier in the course was deliberately erased just when it was about to have a meaning. Yeah, funny indeed.

It is exactly what Jill’s doing, too. She’s always talked about the “sex class.” And how do we know who belongs to it? Not because of high heels and eyeliner, not because WE say we’re members of the sex class, but because the patriarchy says we are and treats us accordingly. And how does the patriarchy know how to classify us? Yeah, that ‘ol sex and reproduction thing. So to take the position she has now (that anyone can be a member of the sex class merely by saying they are), she has to erase in everyone’s minds what she’s said in the past. And that process sure ain’t pretty.

LMAO at our boy up there. It strikes me suddenly while looking at him that maybe from spending a lot of time with an F2T, she’s gotten so confused that she really thinks that by muddling all these concepts, everyone really can be anything just by saying so and the revolution will be here just on the force of that alone. Maybe she really believes that that in itself is revolutionary and can’t see what a bizarre hash that is making of her favorite thing — words and their meanings — while not changing the facts of women’s lives one iota (obviously she’s gotten lost somewhere in the concept woods with the pomos and queers and trans and forgotten the point of radical feminism).

We know she’s around the bend, but is she even looking at the crap she’s writing? Maybe she’s trying to get into a queer studies program to get her graduate degree. This should get her there:

If transwomanism is not about the fetishization of girlie affect, but about identity, it follows that it is also not about femininity, but about femaleness.

First she dismisses what trans themselves say and do around being girlie and feminine (that’s a classic pomo academic tactic — “that’s not the point!”, they say), then tries to use the form of a logic statement (“it follows that”) to make it sound all smart ‘n stuff, then claims a status, nay gravitas, for the word “femaleness” that no one has ever heard of it having and certainly doesn’t have it when FAB women claim it on her blog (she herself has said that there’s no such thing).

She has done what they do, come up with vague ideas packaged in words and phrases that seem to mean something, but don’t, and then, of course, demanded that everyone stop talking about this right now. Because we might point out that some guy with a dick and mustache could tell us it’s all about his femaleness and we’d just have to nod prettily.

“[…]everyone really can be anything just by saying so and the revolution will be here just on the force of that alone.”

This is it exactly, Noanodyne. Same conclusion I came to.

I mean I wish that all this oppression bullshit (female*ness*) wasn’t happening too but, you know, IT IS and no amount of wishing it wasn’t there or oh-so-post-modernly declaring individual freedom from it is an utter waste of time. And, no, I don’t care how many individuals are declaring said freedom because all I see is everything staying exactly the same way EXCEPT that men can now *be* “femaleness”.

But isn’t all this shit about “femaleness” in direct opposition to the initial recent thread, whereby one commenter kindly pointed out – “oh noes, tranz aren’t confused between gender/sex, it’s woman they are after” yaddah yaddah. I think delphyne may have pointed out the inconsistency with that with them using MTF, which is a biological sex distinction, not a gender distinction.

And now the worm has turned once again. It’s not about femininity, it’s about femaleness!

One of the factors that excludes many transwomen (at the very least, the ones who are feminine) from feminism is the rejection of femininity. With all of the cissexist expectations put on her, how can a transwoman feel safe with people who insist that her gender expression is a contrived tool of her oppressor.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

ok look dickwad: enforced femininity is a contrived tool of FAABs oppressors. namely, men. doncha just love the appropriation of oppressed status here? with an olympic-grade roundoff-back-handspring-doublethink at the end. woo-boy now thats good transappropriation.

“[…]everyone really can be anything just by saying so and the revolution will be here just on the force of that alone.”

i appreciate the thought that went into this noanodyne. i really do. i can see why anyone would want to believe it too, i mean its kinda beautiful isnt it? alas…as we all know, reality must intrude. radfems know better than to waste much time on wishful thinking, and thats largely what seperates us from them. twisty has to know this. and yet she CHOOSES not to apply radical thought, to this one area. (or one of many perhaps? not sure). at any rate, someone speculated elsewhere that its got to be personal, and thats very easy to believe too.

also, “our boy” gives me the major creeps! just, EW. its amazing how the PIV-entitlement just oozes from him, and hes not even real. its probably the picnic…nothing screams “manipulation for sexual gain!!!11!1″ like a man preparing a non-barbecued meal. and…serving it on a blanket. with alcohol. DUH.

That fella over at that other blog really missed the boat on what she sid.
She did not offer trans inclusion. She simply said she would not exclude based on how they identify themselves but rather on how they act in the threads. Now he’s going to take her to task because he is so ignorant that he thinks her six year criticism of femininity is a “dig at transwomen” . What a painfully stupid man. Odds are he never read a word of her blog until he had this opportunity to make it all about him.
Also, too, and besides, how exactly do you go about being a feminist without having a clue what Feminism is? Srsly? Dood? Yer an idiot.

Oh look it’s a “I’m a lesbian in a man’s body” dude without the t-shirt.

Is this actually a thing? I just watched The L Word for the first time recently and was so confused by that guy that Alice dates who calls himself Lisa and “identifies” as a lesbian (curiously not as a trans woman though). I assumed (hoped?) it was a subtle dig by the show at the ridiculous conclusions one would come to if they followed this queer “identity theory” to its logical end. But are there real men in the world who do this?

“She did not offer trans inclusion. She simply said she would not exclude based on how they identify themselves but rather on how they act in the threads.”

Well, technically yes in the one comment on the post before the *translucent* one (I think?) but then went on to poke the issue with a pointy stick for several posts and has continued to do so AND by virtue of that, her anti-femininity stance has been exposed as nothing less than capricious.

That linked-to-boy was lost in Jill’s rhetoric (“rhetoric” in the positive sense) is only surprising in that he did not understand that Jill appears to be acting more in his best interests than, say, mine or yours.

welp…if its all about “doodly behavior,” for example, the “helpful hint” offered by one of them that saying “transwoman” is as offensive as saying “gaywoman” (or their other favorite example that ive seen a million times, BLACKWOMAN)…i would say that as soon as one of them outs themselves as trans, they are immune from exclusion based on the fear of transphobia. AS ALWAYS.

luckily, another commenter reminded everyone that “gaywomen” are actually called LESBIANS. DUH.

I hate being in moderation. I’m so BAAAAD I can’t get anything published over there. Fine. I will both share my super-extra-“radical” comment here and express my more tangential feelings because I know you all care.

yttik did an AWESOME job of jumping on the thread to tell Jill that she had backed herself into a corner. This is that annoying “essential female: WTF *is* it?” problem. And no, it isn’t the practice of femininity. Noanodyne said:

She’s always talked about the “sex class.” And how do we know who belongs to it? Not because of high heels and eyeliner, not because WE say we’re members of the sex class, but because the patriarchy says we are and treats us accordingly. And how does the patriarchy know how to classify us? Yeah, that ‘ol sex and reproduction thing.

Oh, yeaaaaah. Impregnation and shit. Vaginas and stuff! That’s the necessary CRITERIA/pre-requisite for membership in the sex class. Wow. That’s hard to remember, isn’t it? I betta write it down.

Now, what got me stuck in mod is this, I said: IF Twisty wants to justify her trans-lovin’ by stating that post-patriarchy “gender” won’t exist so neither will trans, then she should say the same about “femininity.” According to FEMINISM, gender is the collective constructs of masc/fem, am I right? So no gender, no femininity. No femininity, no gender. (Or actually, I’ve always thought that masc/fem would become disembodied concepts, but that the groupings of characteristics comprising masc v. fem are so deeply embedded in our collective consciousness that they’d be impossible to conceptually destroy. But that’s a tangent of a tangent, my sisters.) If Twisty wants ta gives trans women a pass, she should give feminine women a pass!! Especially since feminine women are just doing what they’re s’possed to be doing (as Good Women TM) and trans women are claiming that they can enter the sex class despite not being in possession of the prerequisite physicality. Obviously, this is why FCM made her graphic. Female vs. feminine, different!

Now, here’s my comment about femininity, which you know I get all heated about cause peeps is lacking critical analysis regarding. So I said:

First, this post seems to be addressing a certain KIND of feminine expression: aesthetics and/or bodily adornment, yes? There doesn’t seem to be much discussion of behavioral or emotional femininity. The post should be specific so as not to cloud the argument.

[Lauren O said] But what about the color pink, which obviously isn’t inherently gendered? Or what about things that are considered “feminine” but which should really be considered “human,” like taking care of children or not being violent? Surely the practice of those things doesn’t degrade women in and of itself.[/Lauren]

WHAT ABOUT TEH PINK?!!!???11??!11!??

This is precisely the problem with painting all “femininity” as BAAAAAAD. It’s all/none thinking that doesn’t address the ROOT of the problem. Women’s oppression is spun through the unequal APPLICATION of the characteristics and traits assigned to the female sex (femininity), not necessarily from the nature of the act/behavior itself. As Lauren O explains, when men engage in child care or emotional listening, it is not inherently degrading. The act itself does not result in degradation, it is the CONTEXT that creates oppressive circumstances. When MEN wear pink, it is an objectively neutral act. When MEN in pink are viewed through the lens of patriarchy, on the other hand, they are SUBJECTIVELY perceived as doing something “wrong” or inappropriate. It’s about patriarchal MEANING, not necessarily the essence of the trait itself. Why is this so difficult for feminism and feminists to grasp? Application. Reason. Different. Different analyses. Please do not confuse them.

In all seriousness, why is this so HARD? I don’t get it. Whatever. Moving on.

My last rant is about privilege divestment. UGH! Like ANYONE cares that I gave up mascara. No one cares!! No “oppressed woman” (<<who is that anyway??) has received a benefit because I so magnami-feminist-ly stopped wearing mascara, ok? No one. We are no closer to revolution that we were last year. Should I give my old tube and wand to an "oppressed woman" so she can clump it onto her eyelashes?? Or should I give an "oppressed woman" $9US every 5 months because that's what I would've spent on it?? And $9US would feed her for one meal on one day, every 5 months? That's nice and all, but I don't think it's gonna kick-start a revolution, k? The entire strategy of divestment is dependent on the assumption of "privilege" being tangible. It only works if you can clearly identify the "fruits" of one's privilege and if you can clearly identify a BENEFICIARY to whom the sacrifice of your "fruits" will inure. In a lasting manner! Sacrifice is not the point, BENEFIT is. Hello! THE SYSTEM IS RIGGED. The system is NOT designed to serve a democratic majority of peoples, such that it will naturally or inevitably self-destruct/work differently or more JUSTLY if we, as individuals, can reach a CRITICAL MASS of dissent. It just doesn't work that way! If it did, gas prices would be much lower and health care wouldn't be for profit. Guess what? Consumers do NOT control the market. It is not a FREE MARKET. Nor am I interested in associating with a bunch of sanctimonious, self-righteous privilege-sacrificers who are now bitter that their revolutionary utopia did not spontaneously materialize after they gave up their mascara and SUVs! Yes, I'm ranting!! Ok, I'm done. :)

If Piny is at IBTP we’re at the maggot stage of decomposition.
A predictable stage of recent events.

FCM, you should have given your mascara (or the ongoing donation) to the M2Ts, after all, they win the Oppression Olympics as the Mostest Oppressest Women Eva™, even though, through years of accumulating wealth as men, they can easily afford this shit. So bad-FCM for not automatically thinking about waddabout teh poor trans!

I wound up talking to that dude at a party once, but he didn’t look like Mr. Second Life Avatar there. He was a tweedy academic type going prematurely bald, and he was just dying to tell me about his female identity. And how upset and angry he was that lesbians (lesbians are all such EVIL BITCHES!) didn’t accept him as a fellow lesbian. (Just in case it isn’t absolutely clear, this is an intact man we’re talking about, not an FTM having second thoughts.)

He got very agitated, and wouldn’t drop the subject. I got fed up and pointed out that the only women who might possibly be interested in dating him were the ones who liked standard male bodies, i.e., heterosexual women. He nearly blew a gasket. At that point, the only thing I could do was walk away.

this is the oldest trick in the fucking book, and they honestly (HONESTLY) think that women are stupid enough to fall for it, every time. YOU HAVE TO FUCK ME BECAUSE (xyz). OTHERWISE YOU ARE A (xyz). dworkin absolutely evicerated 60s counterculture men for pulling this shit on 60s counterculture women…this is what “free love” was all about. not so liberating when you think about it…not for the women anyway. never has been, never will.

These intact males insisting they are lesbians has been around for a while. It seemed to start off as some sort of joke in the 80s, with any-dude claiming to be a lesbian because he liked sleeping with women.

I took them to be idiots back then, so find it weird that (funfems etc) would take them seriously with this shit now.

Wahhhh! I guess stating that women have a unique reproductive system and no penises makes me transphobic and anti-science, too!

LOL, I think I get it now. Femaleness is about the ability to hold two irrational, contradictory ideas at the same time. That ability can be both a valuable skill and a bloody curse, today with the emphasis on the cursing part.

Men who wish they were lesbians should stick to their on agenda and mate with other men who wish they were lesbians. THAT way they would really show us that sex doesn’t matter to them.

Why do they insist that their partners have a certain sex? Why don’t they feel attracted to gender?
I suggest they stop calling themselves female homoSEXUALS and start living and *feeling* like homogenders!

Why is Twisty wreaking wrath on Yttk for her opinion on transwomen when some of her blog pals have gone to work for pimps and she managed to keep blowing them kisses? Bitchphd put her public coin bucket under young women being abused for pornography and Twisty managed to disagree without having an embarrassing tantrum, but Yttk’s comments about transwomen are beyond the pale and all who think like her must be shouted at and banished?

Global Accords Governing the Fair Use of Women stipulate that the most feminized of women – prostitutes – are for everyone to physically and financially exploit, including feminist bloggers, but the most masculinized of women – men who are women only in their minds – should not have to hear anything said they don’t like because it hurts their feelings and that’s totally unconscionable.

AlienNumber! So glad to see you ’round these parts! You totally rocked the house with Selah and N/A in the comments to the sub-human post. But then, you’ve been doing that on alla them. Glad to see you’re still on there commenting, too.

It’s incredible isn’t it, AlienNumber? Born women are not included in hate crime legislation. It’s almost funny in a kind of bitter way, our culture is concerned that men who are perceived as female are sometimes abused. Women being perceived as female and being abused, well that’s just business as usual. It’s similar in the Middle East too, in many countries, trans gendered people actually have an equal rights amendment and protected status not granted to born women. Doesn’t mean it’s utopia for anyone, but if the patriarchy really viewed trans women as actual women, they’d all be sitting under the bus with the rest of us.

So a supreme court justice says that women aren’t covered by the 14th amendment and the DOJ says that gender-identity women are. Yep, you nailed it yttik: [I]f the patriarchy really viewed trans women as actual women, they’d all be sitting under the bus with the rest of us.

it was puzzling how some of the commenters on the twisty thread had a million words to say literally *nothing* and then kept claiming that language was failing them. i’m sorry but if your concepts are clear, there is always a way to express them. even if you have to get creative.

and this blog shows how true that is – BECAUSE fcm’s and miska’s concepts are clear they are able to go wayyyy beyond words and literally draw us a picture. the crystal-clarity of thought being illustrated here is amazing and inspiring.

i have visited a ton of m2t blogs and read a shit ton of posts and comments trying to get where they’re coming from (of all radfem fronts this is probably one that has interested me the most, and it’s partly because getting to the bottom of the trans thing means getting to the bottom, the very last, of the patriarchy’s tricks, if you know what i mean, we are scraping the barrel here, women) and none of them has ever managed to put their positions across AS CLEARLY as the radfems put across their own.

more than that, however, i don’t understand WHY being a “man” or “woman” specifically is so important. why not do it like the hijras in the shahi mohalla? they’re physiologically males (only about 10% actually castrated) and just dress up like women but call themselves “hijras”, a third gender. what in thatta khou is so damning about being a trans person, or a third gender?

/end twanzphobix rant.

(and a total OT derail: i stayed up all last night watching the millenium trilogy even though i had work today because i am HUGELY crushing on lisbeth salander. it’s unbelievable how much of the movie they devoted to the boring reptilian journalist and all that boring “old-white-men-and-scotch-and-politics” drama, which i kept forwarding, just to see lisbeth kicking rapist ass.

the words “hot” “cute” “sexy” are inapplicable for a woman-crush. these are one-dimensional male words for females they see as sexbots. they don’t sit right. anyone got a good word for when you find another woman all of those things and more besides? my concepts here are literally failing because i’ve never felt this way before about another woman, real or fictional.)

A 26-year-old transman from Malta, who can’t be named for legal reasons, has won the right to have his birth certificate amended to reflect his gender identity, a marked victory in a country that sadly lags behind on LGBT rights issues.

The man, birth assigned female, reports always having felt male. As such, he sort gender change surgery abroad per legal stipulations that say applicants must undergo “irreversible” surgery to officially change their gender, a rule that is considered severe under most EU standards.

However, because he has now undergone the surgery, a Maltese court has ruled that the man has fulfilled the necessary criteria to have his gender identity amended on official documents such as his birth certificate.

Similar cases have met with varying levels of success in Malta’s courts where laws over gender identity have been interpreted to have different degrees of coverage in terms of what rights they afford.

From Pink News:

The case follows a transgender woman’s struggle to be allowed to marry.

Joanne Cassar has won and lost her battle at various levels of the Maltese court system since 2004.

The Director of Public Registry has denied her requests and claims that gender identity laws were created to protect trans people’s privacy, rather than giving them state recognition.

Malta scored only one point in ILGA-Europe’s 2010 Rainbow Europe Country Index for sporting only a single provision that prevents anti-gay workplace discrimination even though the country does have stricter laws for other classifications. Malta currently lacks discrimination protections for LGBTs in housing and credit sectors. Hate speech related to LGBT identity is not recognized as a specific offense.

Holy crap. I found this video on the tumblr and was like “Whaaaaaaat the fuck did I just watch” and then I remembered this post and it made me think of this guy-I MEAN… lady? I thought I’d share if only for the WTF factor and hilarious connection to “lesbian” MtT’s who retain a penis.

It’s Stephen the Lesbian! The whole video looks like an MtT’s dream world, where lesbians are all sexy sexy and totally just waiting for a “lady penis” to latch onto.

And I don’t mean to comment on such an old post, but the whole thing just made me think of the picture who posted. Seemed like such a fitting place to put it. :x

Actually, membership in the ‘sex class’ is determined by the ‘power class’ – those with the power to determine – and to enforce – the label of fuckability.
In ancient greece young boys were ‘sex class’. In Rome slaves of any sex were ‘sex class’. Today women are ‘sex class’.
The thing is – you don’t get to volunteer yourself as ‘sex class’ ( and you sure don’t get to volunteer your self OUT of it!) any more than in other times one could self-determine if one belonged to the ‘slave class’.
Being put in the ‘used’ class – and not in the ‘make use of’ class – means you DON’T have deciding power.

Logic follows. I’m not saying that trans persons can or could never in any time or culture be put into the ‘sex class’ aka ‘woman class’ – but as it stands today? The very act of insisting on the ability to *demand* such as status is the act that *refutes* it.

women have always been the stick-your-dick-into class. thats where babies come from, and how we ended up with 7 BILLION globally. fuckability is only part of it, and it the most superficial/obfuscating part at that. the other (larger, political) part is the female-specific harms of the penis.